Call of War 1.5 round 2!

freezy wrote:

one could even argue its always more effective in the air to surprise or attack enemies then by letting them come at one

"Attack" means you firstly actively approach the enemy. This is already close to impossible, since strats are the slowest and least maneuverable planes at the sky. Secondly open fire on the enemy. This again is difficult with a strat, since the majority of its guns was pointing to its rear (hence my story about the looping in one of my last posts... it was ironic, just to make that clear).

And "surprise" an enemy with such a giant and loud monster of a plane? Forget it.

Alright; the above was rather details - let's come to the most important thing:

freezy wrote:

in 1.0 there was a large gap in needed activity from very low in early game to very high in late game, and we are trying to normalize that a bit with the progression system and the focus on urban provinces. Having such a progression from fast to slow and cheap to expensive and weak to powerful as the game progresses is also a very common thing for strategy games

Of course I recognize your goal. The amount of unit production orders a player can give shouldn't increase as drastically from early to late game as it does in CoW1.0. That makes sense. But the way you chose for achieving it is wrong, since it sacrifices all realism. What CoW1.5 contains for this purpose (these changes all fit to each other, so they count as one adhesive change

*** Unit production times got an extreeeeemely high progression.

*** Unit production and upkeep costs got a progression.

*** Unit power increase got an extremely high progression.

*** Production of ALL units, even militia, was disallowed in rural provinces.

For playability that's OK, but all of it is unrealistic. Much better is the following:

*** Let the first week run at double speed (i.e. two in-game-days in 24 real hours - first day change after 12 real hours - might not be easy to implement this, because all time related labels would have to be divided by 2 during first week, but is worth a big effort and possibly you can use the implementation from the speed rounds); after 7 days, speed turns back to normal. That's enough to make the start less slow without making the amount of orders you can give in late game even more overwhelming. In other words, it would achieve your goal. You can then also revert the attack timer back to 60 minutes. 30 minutes is bad, because it makes it more important to come online at every hour of the day. It's very frustrating to find half your army destroyed after being offline for a few hours. With my proposal of double-speed first week, you'd have that issue only during first 7 real-life days, not during the entire game.

*** For unit production times I can accept a progression, because the concept of production capacities being a limiting factor also in later game phases is good - one should have to invest into always having sufficient production facilities. But progression in production times should be a bit less extreme than in CoW1.5. You can then make production buildings a bit more expensive (especially the first level) to keep it being difficult to always have enough production capacities.

*** Keep unit production and upkeep costs constant, like in CoW1.0.

*** Allow barracks to be built in rural provinces.

*** Change unit value progression to a realistic one. I'm thinking about something like the following - would come much closer to my understanding of the period from about 1932 to 1950 without crreating gameplay issues (P.S.: I would like to add in brackets the progression that CoW1.5.2 has, so you could see that the discrepancy is big, but cannot since my CoW1.5 match finished too long ago and isn't accessible any more); table shows values of highest level units compared to level 1 units:

So for example infantry would improve from 15 HP at level 1 to 20 HP at highest level. Not to 60 HP (if I remember right) as in CoW1.5.2.

Unless you bring unit progression back to a reasonable scale, you'll lose everyone who cares about realism. In case you now want to answer you don't find much feedback in that direction here: yeah, that's because those who care already have given up commenting on CoW1.5. Since it's just too far off.

I'm aware that in the table from my last post, armour has a higher progression than infantry and ordnance, as I gave armour a strong progression in speed and HP, while infantry almost only improves its damage output. Did so deliberately, because that's the development that took place during the 1930s and 1940s. Armoured vehicles were equipped with thicker steel plates and an overall more robust construction, while at the same time nevertheless becoming faster thanks to more powerful engines. At the same time infantry and ordnance didn't change that much. At least a 1950 soldier couldn't really march faster than a 1932 soldier. And also wasn't much harder to kill. Well, yeees, infantry tactics improved a little bit, also medical equipment. So I gave them +33% HP (from 15 HP at level 1 to 20 HP at highest level), but really not more please. The +200% or more that you have in CoW1.5.2 are just way beyond any reason.

You might now come up saying nice proposal, but we want players to build armour, infantry and ordnance in similar amounts in both early and later game phases. I also want that. But I wouldn't want to achieve that by giving them all the same progression. Instead upgrading should cost 0 food and 0 manpower - should cost only metal, goods, oil and rares in an amount relative to the production costs of the respective unit. Which would also be realistic, especially if you change all implementation/balancing back to the CoW1.0 interpretation of manpower as available potential soldiers and not as soldiers OR workers as in CoW1.5 (which you should do anyhow, but that's a different topic).

So outcome of all that: Since the infantry units should cost significantly more manpower and food than other units, but correspondingly less of the other resources, their upgrade costs would be low. Which again is realistic and partly compensates for their low speed and HP progression. Second part of that compensation should be lower research costs for infantry units and ordnance. Which - again - would be realistic in itself as well as in the complete picture.

freezy once wrote in this thread that upgrade costs couldn't be differentiated for the different resources, but that only their percentage in relation to the production costs could be changed - at the same degree for all involved resources. I'm sorry, but after 16 years working in software development I cannot believe this. What he certainly meant with that statement, must have been that with the current implementation, upgrade costs can't be differentiated between the resources. Well, then change that implementation. It might cost some effort, yes. You should take that effort. And you should take it now, because now's your time to make CoW right.

You might also argue oh, OK, nice thoughts Hans A. Pils, but we prefer research trees which are as simple as the Thursday afternoon trash channel TV programme. Players should have to look at it only once, for 5 minutes, to already know the whole story. So all units get the same progression for each of their values, each level up giving them the same step forward. Makes players just check it once and then already know it by heart, so they can from then on focus solely on clicking on their units, dragging them against the enemy, killing... doing what the brainless consider to be fun. That's better, hm? I already went on a rant against this after CoW1.5.1 test event. And again I tell you that every detail in the research progression, every irregularity / deviance from the rule is welcome, as long as it makes sense from realism perspective. Because it's fun to often have to browse the research section in order to make the right research or build decisions. Keeps your brain going; gives you long-term motivation. And it's fun to this way learn something about how WW2 reality was. For example I always loved the fact that in CoW1.0, the anti air values of ground units except for AA and SPAA couldn't be improved much over time with research (whereas in CoW1.5.2, a tank is better at shooting down a plane than an AA gun if the tank is just one level higher than the AA gun... which is ridiculous). Or the fact that AT didn't improve much at all in CoW1.0, which is totally in line with that historical period.

Of course it's your decision if you want to turn CoW into a trivial game for the casual, often low IQ players. These more often have the tendency to pay for Pay2Win, so you'll hardly feel it in your wallet if you remove realism from the game (as CoW1.5.2 does). But let me put a stone in your shoe: You should ask yourself if that's what you want for yourself. When you wake up and look in the mirror on the morning of the day after replacing CoW1.0 with CoW1.5, do you still want to think of yourself as a member of the great Bytro team that carefully designs the authentic, accurate, niveauvoll and sophisticated strategy game CoW, attracting a literate, intelligent community? Then you should do what I wrote in my last post - would be some work, because you'd have to re-arrange quite a number of things, but there's nothing else speaking against it, or do I miss something?

Or would you on that day rather like to see yourself as producer of one of those many arcade trash games on the net? Then please continue with 1.5 and ignore my last post (and most of my others).

I suggest you make a vote amongst your team members with everyone answering the question from last paragraph.

Ah, in case you doubt my remark concerning the impact of CoW1.5.2 on the community: The average quality of the feedback in this thread compared to the feedback after first test event gives you a pre-taste. Many intelligent speakers have already given up testing CoW1.5 or commenting on it, after seeing that none of the bad fundamental concepts has been re-considered. So now every second participant in this thread didn't even understand that the upgrade costs in CoW1.5.2 are quite reasonable (OK, lowering them a little will also be fine, but already the way they are in CoW1.5.2 it makes sense to upgrade about every second unit once or twice during the game... which is not that badly balanced, is it?).

Well, wish you good luck in the future with the prolific feedback from that community.

Sorry for the harsh words, but CoW1.5 - if not changed fundamentally - will make me leave as well (and destroy my favourite hobby ).

Hans A. Pils wrote:

nless you bring unit progression back to a reasonable scale, you'll lose everyone who cares about realism.

Nevermind for your feeling about communities decides. You can not speak for whole community nor for even half of it...

Do you do math? An Infantry regiment type 1939 in cow 1.5.2 need about 1050 menpower, Regiment type 1950 about 2120. Lone manpower assumpt double of HP. Level of improovness not even counted...

Hans Pils, take a pils, chill down... Rework your mind skills... Handful tough thoughts in your posts are buried with tons of foulness. It is not worth.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

But let me put a stone in your shoe: You should ask yourself if that's what you want for yourself. When you wake up and look in the mirror on the morning of the day after replacing CoW1.0 with CoW1.5, do you still want to think of yourself as a member of the great Bytro team that carefully designs the authentic, accurate, niveauvoll and sophisticated strategy game CoW, attracting a literate, intelligent community? Then you should do what I wrote in my last post - would be some work, because you'd have to re-arrange quite a number of things, but there's nothing else speaking against it, or do I miss something?

Or would you on that day rather like to see yourself as producer of one of those many arcade trash games on the net? Then please continue with 1.5 and ignore my last post (and most of my others).

I suggest you make a vote amongst your team members with everyone answering the question from last paragraph.

I must admit that I didn't read through all the walls of text in this thread; but I did play the 1.5.2 event and yes, it was a disappointment. I'm sure everyone above already said a lot about the reasons for that, so I'll not repeat it; but what I was missing most is the feel of CoW. Indeed, "just another web game", not the one I singled out to play and kept playing for many years because it feels so good. It felt slow and tedious, with vast empty areas where only a few units move around. There are lots of irrationalities and counter-intuitivities; for example, researching tech is often a bad idea cause it means your production drastically decreases; city specialization leads to reduced flexibility and strategic options, etc.

I can only hope, and I really really hope, that introducing 1.5 for production will NOT mean that 1.0 is disabled, and that the people who favor their old, beloved game will be able to keep playing it. Otherwise, I might well be one of the quitters.

@K.Rokossovski, agreed - except for when you said CoW1.5 feels slow: It's now possible to give a significant number of unit production orders already during the first days. While in late game, you'll produce less units than in CoW1.0. All in all, that doesn't change the average pace, but brings it to a similar level in early and late game, which is positive (still, as said, should have been achieved by increasing overall game speed at the beginning instead of by bringing everything out of whack).

But then, with "tedious" you nailed it. Can't really explain why, but felt the same to me.

And yes, there are tons of irrationalities and counter-intuitives.

And yes, the over-stressed importance of cities feels horrible. Cities were almost fine in CoW1.0. All that I would have done to make them stand out a bit in comparison to rural provinces is to give manpower the significance it deserves in CoW1.0 by decreasing food costs of infantry (not getting tired of linking the detailed description: --> link <--). Since cities produce more manpower than rural provinces also in 1.0, that would have been enough to make them meaningful.

pjrobbo wrote:

Individual resources have lost their identity and they now seem like a big pool of similar.

pjrobbo wrote:

Health bars, [...]

It's not a huge problem during your first battle with green health but afterwards you're left with orange or red health bars with barely a unit lost. My two damaged stacks of 25 units each were then unusable for the next 10 days gaining less than 10% per day. As others have said, do you rest them in Tahiti for a fortnight or waste them as level 1 cannon fodder. No self respecting general wants to send an ill looking troop with red and orange health bars into battle to be wasted!

And I'd like to add that with the new dying threshold, you more often have to decide whether you care about your K/D (that would often make you retreat damaged units) or only about the victory (that would more often let them fight nevertheless). It's not fun having to choose between these two - goood K/D OR victory. Would be more motivating to have either good decisions that help you with both, or bad decisions that harm both these goals (but should of course be difficult to find the good decisions).

Well... that's rather a side-note, in my opinion.

Me gusto mucho que las partidas sean mas rapidas y el modo en que cambio la forma de producir, sin embargo sigo viendo que uno de los grandes problemas es la conectividad de los jugadores que suelen irse de la partida. te quiero preguntar si es posible que se puedan hacer partidas de duracion de 2 horas? o un tiempo parecido?. Porque observo que las partidas las terminan ganando los jugadores mas activos y no aquellos que plantean mejores estrategias. Por supuesto que la estrategia influye y mucho pero me suele pasar que no puedo estar conectado las 24 horas en la partida y cuando me voy a dormir pierdo muchas tropas por solo el hecho de desconectarme.

muchas gracias

I had some things that need to be fixed or considered on COW 1.5.2 posted earlier in this thread, but I wanted to stress that the main frustrations initially were about how different it was. It was different, but also refreshing in many ways, such as the early game speed. Strategy and tactics gave an even more huge advantage to skilled players, which was great. Naval units were awesome and I could create a map leading naval fleet out of a single naval yard. I made it a point not to further research light tanks and militia so that when I took over a city, I could slap up a barracks to quickly defend with fast produced militia, or pump out a light tank to ravage the country side while the enemy slept.

Some more things I did not mention before-

I liked the elimination of gigantic random damage factors and requirement of overwhelming force to defeat a unit, but it exacerbated defending problems and magnified the 30 minute attacks. In the current version, you could get a single unit in a fort and delay the enemy from taking it for a few hours. You could fly over and give it air support and you might hold the position or have time to get reinforcements. No longer. These changes allow a large stack to roll through without hardly a hiccup or obstacle:

1. Twice as fast attack timers, 30 min vs 1 hour.
2. Changes to the way damage is distributed makes large stacks retain numbers and damage strength far better
3. Reduced value of lev 1 forts
4. Increased fueling time for getting airforce reassigned to protect and provide air support. You better put a expensive high level airbase in BFE if you want to cover some ground in time.
5. More offensive oriented units that don't get their offense reduced even in city terrain
6. Reduction in random factor that tended to reduce damage incalculably low at times, giving a free hour to reinforce.
7. Don't seem to need overwhelming force to kill the last bit of defender like you do in current version.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Yo freezy,

OK, point taken about +25% bonus for mot./mech. infantry in open terrain. I can accept that one now.

But these arguments I don't think are valid (no hard feelings though ) :

freezy wrote:

AA/SPAA: I think its perfectly valid to give them mountain bonus, as they a nearer to the flight altitude of airplanes and harder to hit for airplanes due to obstacles.

OK, AA against air attacks in mountainous terrain feels hard to tell. There your arguments may count, so a slight bonus (theoretically, rather planes should have a malus against ground in mountains and above forrests, but since that cannot be realized in CoW, giving AA a slight bonus in mountains and forrests/hills is the best alternative) is OK. But not a big one, since AA against ground targets clearly didn't have an advantage in mountains (have in mind that most AA guns could hardly or not at all fire downwards, so placing them on an elevated position wasn't practical against ground attacks).So far, so good. But now imagine a SPAA vehicle in mountains. Bonus? No way. Their mobility advantage is gone there. And even if you manage to get it up a steep slope, it would stand there like served on a silver plate to the enemy.

freezy wrote:

Regular infantry already has a bonus in cities and we dont want to give bonuses in too many categories to one unit.

Why not? I mean why not leave the (correct) +50% bonus in cities to regular infantry, additionally give them +25% in mountains and in return slightly decrease it's basic strength or slightly increase it's costs. What's the benefit in almost all units having either one +50% bonus or two +25%. You're looking for consistency? Not required there. To make units easy to compare? That's not positive. Reading unit stats and comparing units, thinking hard which one to research or build is a big fun part in the game. Units should be realistic (and thus intuitive), not easy to compare.

freezy wrote:

I saw a greater variety of units than in 1.0, and also myself felt greater need to combine different units because their roles have become more diverse than in 1.0.

You're totally right that in CoW1.5, a healthy diversification is way more often the way to success than in 1.0 (which is very good). But not with your statement this comes from giving a clearer offensive or defensive focus and in particular not from having a mix of both in both infantry and armour tech tree. It comes solely from units not upgrading automatically any more.Let's look at AC+LT+MT+HT (but analysis for regInf+motInf+mechInf or for LT+MT+motInf+mechInf would be the same

* Either you're a player who likes to attack with close-combat ground units. Then in CoW1.5.2 you choose between LT and MT, maybe build both, but forget about AC and HT.

* Or you're a player who prefers ranged attack with arty and who thus has no use for close-combat units with offensive focus. Then you possibly select AC, or HT, possibly both. But for sure never LT or MT.

* Or you're one of those seldom players who prefer to have both ground close-combat units with defensive and offensive focus, so you have the right stack for each situation. With stack sizes of more or less precisely 10 that's hardly imaginable, but well, maybe for a few players in few constellations on large maps it might be the right choice. Then you still don't research and build all 4 of AC/LT/MT/HT. But either select AC and/or HT plus motorized infantry, or LT and/or MT plus a lot of reg. infantry / militia / AT / TD (there's never a big need for fast stacks with defensive focus).

Do you see my point? Offering both defensive and offensive units in both infantry and armour tech tree doesn't make you choose a bigger selection amongst regInf, motInf, mechInf, AC, LT, MT and HT. Which we'd all like to see, because it's boring and less strategically challenging to have to pick just a few of these at the beginning and then not think about it any more - and because all major powers had all of these units in WW2, so why should a CoW player not be allowed to have all of them and still have a chance to win? That's why I so vehemently propose damage-malus per unit type.

And def. focus for AC and off. focus for motorized infantry is just wrong. Yes, speed was useful for offenses. So I could live with motorized infantry being 1:1. But mot. infantry having offensive focus is neither authentic, nor helpful for anything else. And AC you think weren't used for offenses a lot? I'm sure they were. At least more than by defending parties. Sure, scouting missions were equally important for defender and attacker. But whenever an AC decided to make use of it's (limited) firepower, that was for attacking, not defending. (P.S.: As you said, speed was useful for attacks or counter-attacks .)

We will remove the mountain terrain bonus from AA & SPAA and give it an Urban terrain Bonus instead, as there they also benefit from cover. Plus we had too few units with an urban bonus.

We will also add a mountain bonus for Infantry and Militia to give an incentive to keep using these units later on.

I hope you are satisfied with your quota here of getting us to change things

Yep I get your point but I think that your point rather proves my statement: You now have more to think about which units suit you strategy. You cannot just select any of these units anymore and it will more or less work out like in the old balancing, where multiple units fulfilled the same roles. Thus we increase the strategic depth and the amount of meaningful choices by diversification of unit roles. Maybe you won't always build all of them in a single match due to resource constraints, but you are encouraged to try out different mixes and builds in subsequent matches. We will keep it that way for now.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

freezy wrote:

Them being 1:1 or defensive focused would again open doors for things like the patrol exploit.

Not really. Biggest part of the firepower in air2air fights comes from fighters. To make the patrol exploit unusable it was enough to make them offensive. And I'm not asking you to make give all bombers stronger value against planes in defense than in offense. Naval and tactical bombers you can leave 1:1, since I think these units can be interpreted as including single-propellar, light versions that were capable of attacking other aircraft. Only please give strats more air defense than air attack. Everything else is absurd.

freezy wrote:

I think a strat being def focused in all values makes less sense than a strat being off focused in all values.

My suggestion was not to make strats def focused in all values, but only in their anti-air values. Their values against ground units you can leave as they are.

freezy wrote:

strat. bombers are not meant to fight air units anyway

Oh it was a tough and dangerous job for a fighter to bring down a strategical bomber. They had a tall and thick hull, so they could take a lot of hits before being shot down. And they were equipped with way more and stronger anti-air guns than fighters, so the fighter had to be extremely careful not to approach in an angle that allowed the board cannons of the strat to tear him to pieces within seconds.

Maybe also this engine limitation gets resolved in the future and then we can change it.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Absolutely true. All cheap, bloody fantasy online strategy games you can find out there have such a progression system. And that's one of the main, probably the biggest advantages that CoW1.0 has over them. One of the main reasons why we play CoW and not one of those. It's the reason why CoW1.0 is quite realistic, accurate and authentic (call it however you want) and the others aren't. It's the one concept you shouldn't have taken over from other games.

Of course I recognize your goal. The amount of unit production orders a player can give shouldn't increase as drastically from early to late game as it does in CoW1.0. That makes sense. But the way you chose for achieving it is wrong, since it sacrifices all realism. What CoW1.5 contains for this purpose (these changes all fit to each other, so they count as one adhesive change

*** Unit production times got an extreeeeemely high progression.

*** Unit production and upkeep costs got a progression.

*** Unit power increase got an extremely high progression.

*** Production of ALL units, even militia, was disallowed in rural provinces.

[...]

The unit production time progression isnt really high. Only the base values are very high to incentivice upgrading to the next building level, but once you do that the time increase (minimum production time) is not that big.

Power progression is also not that high, with the next level having 20-35% higher power than the previous level. That was also mostly the case in the old balancing, with the sole difference that the progression there was linear and thus fell off with later levels.

Production disallowed in non-urbans is a whole other topic of course, but I think we discussed that one to death already in this and the last thread.

Regarding the progression, it's just necessary to balance time investment and the resource economy. We saw large discrepancies here in the old balancing with stuff getting out of control in the late game, and it's one of our key goals to tackle this. So the progression will stay. Even if that means that its not 100% realistic in every metric. Our costs and times are not historically accurate to begin with, we didn't research how much unit ABC cost in year 193X or how long it took to produce, and thus also the progression isn't meant to be a realistic value. Then we can continue with other values like map distances and how unit ranges and unit speeds relate to that (with all of them varying per map size). All of these values are also arbitrary and set for optimal gameplay and not realistic at all. And all of that's ok for most players. If we wanted to transform CoW into using the most accurate values possible everywhere we also would have to overhaul alot in the 1.0 balancing. But doing so is not needed, as having absolutely accurate values in every regard is not needed for the game to feel historical authentic for most players.

We also don't like letting the first game week run on higher speed and then getting lower. That changes a whole lot in the game, from unit speeds to amount of combat tickets per hour to time of daychange etc. Its a very messy solution that is also technical very hard. Not going for that.

Another goal for us is to make the game more accessible (while keeping strategic depth). You may love digging through all unit stats and figuring out all the different progressions and rules, and much of this stuff will still be there even with the changes. But where we can we should try to lower that complexity and make stuff easier to grasp and easier to understand, following clearer guidelines. In regards to this goal it makes more sense to let all units follow a similar progression than to have a vastly different progression mechanic for every unit. It's also easier to balance and to make sure that units stay relevant in the later stages of the game. For you it may feel too easy if stuff follows the same rules, but even that will still be hard to grasp for many newcomers. Because we just have alot of that stuff in the game. Even with all of the changes we now make, the game will still be very hardcore in terms of complexity for a free2play game. But we try to get at least a little bit better here.

Always remember, you are not the average player but one of the most hardcore players, representing the minority. Stuff that is super clear and obvious for you is not for he majority. Just look at some of the questions asked in the FAQ section of the forums, to most of us that stuff is clear but its not easy to learn for new players.

Overall we also have to accept that this is a strategy game, not a simulation. Some things are simplified for gameplay reasons.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

What he certainly meant with that statement, must have been that with the current implementation, upgrade costs can't be differentiated between the resources.

In this particular instance I also see no clear benefit of doing so (when we also keep the rest of the changes as they are). It all depends on how you interpret manpower. From your point it makes no sense to have a unit cost manpower afterwards (via upkeep or upgrading), from my point of view it does, because also after a unit was built soldiers have to be replaced or have to get training. And then there is also the possible interpretation that manpower can also stand for technical personell, supply chain personell or factory workers. In my mind the manpower value is not a raw soldier headcount (wouldnt make sense anyway with the low numbers we use), but is a simplified number that stands for all investments that relate to "human resources" needed by the military.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

When you wake up and look in the mirror on the morning of the day after replacing CoW1.0 with CoW1.5, do you still want to think of yourself as a member of the great Bytro team that carefully designs the authentic, accurate, niveauvoll and sophisticated strategy game CoW, attracting a literate, intelligent community? Then you should do what I wrote in my last post - would be some work, because you'd have to re-arrange quite a number of things, but there's nothing else speaking against it, or do I miss something?

Or would you on that day rather like to see yourself as producer of one of those many arcade trash games on the net? Then please continue with 1.5 and ignore my last post (and most of my others).

So: We do not see us as producers of trash arcade games, and we also don't think that we throw all of our values overboard if we release 1.5. In the end we just want to make great strategy games that are fun to play long term. That's what matters the most to us and I think we can achieve it with 1.5, even if it's different in some regard.

Btw, we will test CoW1.5 on a broader scale going forward, also testing it with new players. We will base our next decisions mostly on these results. Individual opinions are helpful but in the end we also have to check quantitative data.

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Ah, in case you doubt my remark concerning the impact of CoW1.5.2 on the community: The average quality of the feedback in this thread compared to the feedback after first test event gives you a pre-taste. Many intelligent speakers have already given up testing CoW1.5 or commenting on it, after seeing that none of the bad fundamental concepts has been re-considered. So now every second participant in this thread didn't even understand that the upgrade costs in CoW1.5.2 are quite reasonable (OK, lowering them a little will also be fine, but already the way they are in CoW1.5.2 it makes sense to upgrade about every second unit once or twice during the game... which is not that badly balanced, is it?).

Well, wish you good luck in the future with the prolific feedback from that community.

Sorry for the harsh words, but CoW1.5 - if not changed fundamentally - will make me leave as well (and destroy my favourite hobby ).

All in all our impression is that the feedback from Event 1 to 2 got much better though and people saw that we actually implemented alot of the suggested changes. More on a detailed level usually as we did not scrap the big changes, yes, but we try to accomodate people where we can and where it fits into our approach.

It would be sad to see you leave of course and I hope you will also give the next events a chance and be more open regarding changes.

FinnDaddy wrote:

I had some things that need to be fixed or considered on COW 1.5.2 posted earlier in this thread, but I wanted to stress that the main frustrations initially were about how different it was. It was different, but also refreshing in many ways, such as the early game speed. Strategy and tactics gave an even more huge advantage to skilled players, which was great. Naval units were awesome and I could create a map leading naval fleet out of a single naval yard. I made it a point not to further research light tanks and militia so that when I took over a city, I could slap up a barracks to quickly defend with fast produced militia, or pump out a light tank to ravage the country side while the enemy slept.

Some more things I did not mention before-

I liked the elimination of gigantic random damage factors and requirement of overwhelming force to defeat a unit, but it exacerbated defending problems and magnified the 30 minute attacks. In the current version, you could get a single unit in a fort and delay the enemy from taking it for a few hours. You could fly over and give it air support and you might hold the position or have time to get reinforcements. No longer. These changes allow a large stack to roll through without hardly a hiccup or obstacle:

1. Twice as fast attack timers, 30 min vs 1 hour.
2. Changes to the way damage is distributed makes large stacks retain numbers and damage strength far better
3. Reduced value of lev 1 forts
4. Increased fueling time for getting airforce reassigned to protect and provide air support. You better put a expensive high level airbase in BFE if you want to cover some ground in time.
5. More offensive oriented units that don't get their offense reduced even in city terrain
6. Reduction in random factor that tended to reduce damage incalculably low at times, giving a free hour to reinforce.
7. Don't seem to need overwhelming force to kill the last bit of defender like you do in current version.

These changes give even more advantage to micro managers or those online vs offline (myself included, but I would like a break or to know my ally has time to come to my aid if i sleep)

Wow, highly appreciate your very considerate answers!!

To these ones I still feel like having to respond:

freezy wrote:

As I said it's right now not possible in our engine to make a unit defensive in only one value and offensive in all other values (if it was we would of course do this and give strats more def value vs AA in a heartbeat!).

Yeah, would be nice if you could get that engine constraint lifted one day, but I think that's not very relevant for other units except for strats. So not worth spending too much time on it.

freezy wrote:

Power progression is also not that high, with the next level having 20-35% higher power than the previous level. That was also mostly the case in the old balancing

A PC game feels authentic if all values that can freely be chosen/modified within the given constraints of it being a PC game make sense and are in a reasonable relation to each other. It's easy to accept for everyone (even for a realism fetishist like me ) that unit ranges, speeds and map scales don't relate to each other, because in a way that's part of the mechanics (and it's immediately obvious that's required to keep it playable). Like if you're looking at a plastic toy soldier, you don't mind that its weight is not scaled down at same percentage as its size, or that it's not moving its legs if you push it along the floor. Because after all, it's a plastic toy soldier. But if that toy soldier instead of a rifle carries a magic wand with which it can send laser beams towards the enemy... then you do care. Then you'll say it's not an authentic model. And it's the same with CoW1.5.2, where units develop super powers within just twenty years.

Saying unit progression doesn't have to be realistic because unit ranges don't relate to map size either is like the producer of toy soldiers saying "it's no problem our toy soldiers now have fingers longer than their legs, because their weight is also too low for their size - they're only a toy, not a simulation".

The huge power progression badly hurts the eye. And I'm sure every player feels it, when they for example see a level 3 AC winning against a level 1 tac, or a level 2 militia winning against a level 1 LT or a level 3 fighter being stronger against ground (if not forgetting HP) than a level 1 tac or a level 6 infantry defeating eight level 1 infantry... things like that. Although not everyone will name it.

freezy wrote:

We also don't like letting the first game week run on higher speed and then getting lower. That changes a whole lot in the game, from unit speeds to amount of combat tickets per hour to time of daychange etc. Its a very messy solution that is also technical very hard.

For a start, why don't you remove the progression in unit production & upkeep costs and lower the HP progression a bit? That would improve realism without any negative side-effects.

I can't join any games for some reason

G4M30C1TY wrote:

I can't join any games for some reason

About manpower: Of course it can be seen either as representing number of available soldiers (as in CoW1.0) or as amount of available "human resources" (that can be used as workforce or troops) as in CoW1.5. That's understood and both is equally valid.

So far no problem with that.

But the CoW1.0 interpretation as number of soldiers is better. Because in CoW1.5.2, all resources including manpower are one soup:

Build industry -> you'll get more of all 6 resources.

Conquer one of the bigger countries -> you'll get more of all 6 resources.

Build a unit -> you need almost the same amount of manpower no matter which unit it is.

Maintain a large army -> you need a lot of all 6 resources.

As @pjrobbo correctly wrote, resources in CoW1.5.2 don't have an identity - you might also name them resource A, B, C, D, E and F - that wouldn't make a difference.

Whereas in CoW1.0, manpower is a "resource" that's fully decoupled from the economical, tradeable ones. And that's a very nice, realistic and well designed concept. It only isn't fully effective in CoW1.0, because for most players (and in mid and late game even for all players) it is fully abundant. In CoW1.0, you usually don't have a use for all that manpower - the realistic usage for a manpower surplus (give your men a rifle and send them to the front) is taken away by infantry costing too much food. But since this can be fixed very easily in CoW1.0 (once again my --> link <--), it's sad to see this very good concept gone in CoW1.5.

Well, since you insist on continuing with CoW1.5, here's what should be done to make its manpower concept a good one:

* Research shouldn't cost manpower (but preferrably rares and something else, for example money).

* Industry shouldn't give a manpower bonus.

* Militia, reg./mot./mech. infantry should cost a lot of manpower (and few other resources) in both production and upkeep.

* Ordnance should cost a medium amount of manpower and a medium amount of other resources.

* All other units should cost clearly less manpower than other resources.

* Cities should give clearly more manpower than rural provinces (also more goods and money, but less food, oil and rares).

* Possibly manpower income should depend on morale (like the other resources do; not sure about this one).

* Upgrade of units shouldn't cost manpower or food (but only goods, steel, oil and rares in relation to their production costs). This should be an advantage that infantry units (and to a lesser extent ordnance) have in comparison to mechanized units. In return, infantry and ordnance should have a waaaay lower HP progression than armour.

* Barracks should give a manpower bonus while being activated and in return cost either money while being activated. Players should be able to choose between "always activated" and "activated only while recruiting". The latter would make the barracks consume money only while an infantry production is ongoing and also give its manpower bonus only while an infantry production is ongoing.

Alternative to the above: Simply continue with CoW1.0 and reduce the food costs of infantry there clearly while slightly increasing its manpower costs.

Either way what you'd get is a concept that's realistic and intuitive in every respect. And that would be a lot of fun to play with. Also strategic depth would be increased by the two-layer resource concept (manpower on the one hand, economical resources on the other hand). And you might create great historic maps, then - with manpower income of provinces relative to the population they really had (and with highly developed countries like GB, Germany, USA, Japan etc. having a lot of money, goods & steel, others in the Middle East having a lot of oil and again others like India, China, Indonesia etc. having a lot of manpower). With CoW1.5.2 you can forget about creating a historic map. It's too far away from reflecting WW2.

Or in simpler words: That would be way more interesting and fascinating than all resources having the same meaning and the same value (as they do have in CoW1.5.2).

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Since a highest level CoW1.5.2 unit has almost 3 times as much HP as a level 1 unit, this means it is almost 9 times as powerful as a level 1 unit. Factor almost 9 compared to factor 2.6 in CoW1.0 is a very big difference and I hold my point that this dramatically reduces authenticity.

Hypothetical Example (no real values

Infantry lvl 6: 75 HP, 15 damage

Infantry lvl 1: 25 HP, 5 damage

Now take 3 lvl 1 Infantry: 3x 25HP (=75 HP), 3x 5 damage (=15 damage). So 3 lvl1 Infantry have the same amount of HP and the same amount of damage as a Level 6 Infantry. That should mean that 3 level 1 Infantry would be equally as strong as 1 Level 6 Infantry, or in other words a level 6 infantry being 3 times stronger (not 9 times stronger).

Of course we have to account for the Infs level 1 losing combat power quicker than the lvl6 Inf since it drops to 2 and then to 1 unit, which reduces combat power faster than just losing HP. So in practice the lvl6 is of course slightly stronger than the 3 lvl1.

Example with your values:

Infantry lvl 6: 25 HP, 15 damage

Infantry lvl1: 25 HP, 5 damage

In this example the level 6 Infantry would kill 1 Infantry after 2 ticks, but would also be killed itself after 2 ticks, and 2 of the lvl1 Infs would survive. So the lvl6 Inf would not be 3x stronger in this case.

Probably the calculation how much stronger a unit is has to go more like this: (HP_factor + damage_factor) / 2.

Or did I miss anything here?

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Saying unit progression doesn't have to be realistic because unit ranges don't relate to map size either is like the producer of toy soldiers saying "it's no problem our toy soldiers now have fingers longer than their legs, because their weight is also too low for their size - they're only a toy, not a simulation".

The huge power progression badly hurts the eye. And I'm sure every player feels it, when they for example see a level 3 AC winning against a level 1 tac, or a level 2 militia winning against a level 1 LT or a level 3 fighter being stronger against ground (if not forgetting HP) than a level 1 tac or a level 6 infantry defeating eight level 1 infantry... things like that. Although not everyone will name it.

I know it's not ideal for realism but in some aspects we have to value gameplay and accessibility higher.

Thanks for your summary of things you would like to see.

freezy wrote:

A unit which has 3x the HP and 3x the damage of another unit, should be 3 times as strong, not 9 times as strong.

Sorry I made that extremely stupid mistake!

So correcting my calculation now (again approximate values; again comparing highest level with level 1

CoW1.5.2: HP progression 300%, damage progression 280% => total combat power progression 290%.

CoW1.0: HP progression 100%, damage progression 240% (is an average value... we may not forget some ground units don't improve their anti air damage at all) => total combat power progression 170%.

That means in CoW1.5.2, one highest level unit has a tough fight against 2.9 level1 units.

While in CoW1.0, one highest level unit against 1.7 level1 units gives the same, close result.

That's still a big difference, but a more acceptable one than I thought until now (because I had mislead myself with the flaw in my calculation).

So I halfway withdraw my criticism of the steeper progression in CoW1.5.2 and only repeat this question:

Why don't you

* remove progression in production and upkeep costs and accordingly

* lower HP progression a bit

?

Effects this would have:

1.: No progression in production and upkeep costs would be more realistic (good for players like me) and reduce complexity of research trees a bit (good for your intentions).

2.: Less steep HP progression would be more realistic as well.

3.: Units costing a bit less in later game phases than they do now in CoW1.5.2 would have these two consequences:

3.1.: Importance of having many (and/or high level) production sites in late game would increase. That's also positive.

3.2.: Total number of units that can be produced in late game would be a bit higher. This one admittedly is negative, but not a big problem, is it (if you don't want that, there might also be another lever to revoke that effect(?))?

freezy wrote:

in some aspects we have to value gameplay and accessibility higher

If not doing the complete "manpower concept" package from my last post, would at least the following be an option you can agree on?

* Lowering HP progression of unarmoured units.

* Making unit upgrade no longer cost food or manpower (mainly unarmoured units would profit from this, so it would balance out the previous change to some extent).

* Increase manpower costs of the four infantry units; decrease their other costs.

* Decrease manpower costs of armour and planes; increase their other costs.

freezy wrote:

Btw, we will test CoW1.5 on a broader scale going forward, also testing it with new players. We will base our next decisions mostly on these results. Individual opinions are helpful but in the end we also have to check quantitative data.

But a CoW1.0 with units not upgrading automatically and better balanced infantry costs (--> link <---) would perform best.

cow 1.5 was great.

i played this game years ago. and when it came out the tactical decsions where all sorta realistic, at least if you didnt count numbers and stats, and like me,,just played it and rove stuff around and learned how to win.

Always lots of tac, and barely nothing on the frount line became the way to win.

i stopped player for reason, probably because i didnt have a computer.

i came back a few months ago and saw and felt that most maps where now this bizzarre light tank rush, and saw Railguns everywhere,,,,unheard of in the begginning.

so when i saw and played 1.5 it seamed to me the tactics where back, and that even building roads and transport infrastucre along supply lines would be back in the game.

i dont know if the elite players in active allainces still play proper tactical battles, and use navies properly, the number of unescorted troops i see on maps,,,inavsions without naval cover and other starneg things, doesnt worry me, nor does gold use, if theres too much you just get out as fast as you can.....

but so, generally, while not adding much except my support to the team, because i just cant count all the numbers, i want to say well done, and if you can get those realistic tactical decsions back into the game,,,,,,{perhaps transport infrasturcture increases speed even more?-=-------then you gotta bomb that rail line if you wanna take that city??????},,, the game will improved and as you say, like it was envsioned.